WordPress Daily Prompt: Reading Material

How do you pick what blogs or books to read? What’s the one thing that will get you to pick up a book or click on a link every single time? 

Photographers, artists, poets: show us CHOICES.

Reading blogs is a different matter to reading books.

I must admit that I have to set priorities when reading blogs. I participate in the daily prompt, meaning that I am not alone. We are few and many according to how the subject appeals to us. Some show just a picture, some videos, but most write a contribution. I do not shake my efforts just out of my sleeve, although I do not have a lot of time to write or compose. Being in Europe I only get the subject at two in the afternoon and as I also have a life I say an hour to write and upload is enough. I also crosspost on Blogger and Facebook, although that does not need a lot of time – it is a routine.

So who do I read? With time you recognise your colleagues who write with you, suffer with you, and hope with you that your words do not land in a desert. I have been on the blog sites for many years, mostly in a prompt. It is out of politeness that you read what the others have written, as well as interest and there are some real jewels of writing out there. It would be selfish just to churn out a blog and wait for everyone to say hello, I read your blog. I do not choose which ones to read, I try to look at all. There is a problem of time sometimes. Perhaps I have to go to the doctor, perhaps I have something to do in town, but I do my best. I love the animal blogs, love the blogs from other countries, and love the fiction that some compose. I just have a look at all. I avoid blogs that try to persuade me to follow certain beliefs. I am a tolerant person and expect others also to be tolerant. I like to widen my horizon and learn something new, but not have it forced on me.

Now to books: that is a different matter. I choose my books according to my taste and my taste is definitely not always the taste of others, it does not have to be. I am a bit of a horror-mystery freak so go for a Neil Gaiman or James Herbert book. I might have books recommended in this genre by friends that know my taste. I am not so much for science fiction. I like a good police-detective story. I have discovered detectives from all over the world. My taste goes in the direction of Scandinavian and German detectives, although I look forward to an American new publication any time. Harry Bosch and I have become friends over the years as well as the Lincoln lawyer – books by Michael Connelly. Keeping an eye on new publications and best sellers is also rewarding. Why not try something else? I am open in my tastes and do not fix myself on the same books.

Reading an old classic is a rewarding pastime, one you missed out on when you were younger. Perhaps the school lessons ruined it for you, or you had better things to read when you were younger. Charles Dickens, Jane Austin, The Bronte sisters, Wilkis Collins, they all have something to offer, so why not. I have been perhaps lucky marrying Mr. Swiss who is also an avid reader and introduced me to many well-known German/Swiss authors. I have met Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Siegfried Lenz, Friedrich Dürrenmatt on the way, just to mention a few. I can read them in the German original version, although the English translations are quite good. A branch out into the Russian novelists, Tolstoi, Dostoyevsky or a look at a Kafka book is also a good discovery. I usually read these In German as they are easier to buy in Switzerland and my Russian is not so good.

A good biography is also rewarding. Fidel Castro, Helmut Schmid, Giuseppe Garibaldi are interesting lives to read. They did not live in boredom, and were often quite adventurous.

I very rarely click on links. I can find the books that interest me on the Amazon site, or on Wikipedia, but I avoid strange unknown sites. My computer is too fragile to digest everything that hovers in cyberspace. How often have I been confronted with “your virus programme advises not to go further”, or something in that line? My computer does not like hopping from link to link, it makes him feel giddy and a keyboard psychosis might arise. There is a standstill, the bytes strike and someone out in the Trojan world is rubbing their brain cells in happiness – another one bites the dust. I used to surf everywhere for everything, but having a happy link clicking hand is not always the best.

Just enjoy reading and the rest will follow. See you around when our paths cross on the cyber motorway.

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WordPress Daily Prompt: Bedtime Stories

What was your favourite book as a child? Did it influence the person you are now?

Staue in the old town of Rheinfelden, Germany : perhaps Mother Goose

My reading thirst was quenched by comics as I was growing up. Mum and dad would read the odd book from the library, but I was never influenced by their taste in literature. I remember the daily comics, the Dandy and Beano to name two, later there was the Topper. I think my favourite story in the comics was Denis the Menace in the Beano.

I never had actual Bedtime stories. My dad was a great story teller, and his stories were always amusing. His war experiences were quite lively. It was only when I grew older and understood more, that he told me how it really was.

As soon as I was old enough to join, mum took me to the local lending library once a week. It was an old building in a park in Bethnal Green, an area in East London where we lived at the time. I was allowed to borrow two books each time we went. I was an early reader, one of those kids that could already read when I started school at the age of five, my first official story at school being “The Cat sat on the Mat”. That cat had all sorts of adventures in the first book, but the idea was to learn what the letters were and to write.

Anyhow back to the library: by the time I was eight years old I had read through the Grimm Fairy tales more than once. I have since learnt that the original stories would not really have been for children, far too brutal. I then progressed to Hans Christian Anderson and I think they were my favourites. I read them all and often came home with the same book from the library. Funny I cannot remember reading any stories from english writers. The Grimm brothers were German, Andersen a Dane and I also read Charles Perrault stories who was French. I believe he was the inventer of Little Red Hiding Hood and Cinderella amongst other stories. Anyhow that was my beginnings into the world of stories. At that time in the 1950’s there was not much else around.

I also liked to read encyclopedias. There were a few versions available for children and I suppose I had a sort of thirst for information at the time. My favourites were the stories about the dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. As a kid I was fascinated by them.

Time went on, my brain sort of developped I suppose and I believe my first “serious” books were the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I just loved them. I think I was then around 11 years old. I sort of grew up with books and remember I was then even able to borrow four books at a time from the library. I was even allowed into the grow-up section of the library.

I often wondered where this thirst for reading came from. Mum and dad were happy with the local newspaper. Dad loved to read spy stories, murder and whatever and mum very rarely actually had a book in her hands. So I did it all by myself I suppose, although I do remember my dad having a few very old classic books that he and his sister had collected at school as school prizes. I was thrilled when he gave me Dracula by Bram Stoker to read. I was then about 11. I still have the book. Perhaps not a bedtime story, but it impressed me.

I don’t think books influenced me in any way. I have not become a brilliant detective, nor do I have a longing to visit the local blood bank and try a few samples, although I must admit I was a blood donar for many years until I became diabetic. I love reading today, and prefer to spend an evening with a book instead of glaring into the TV, although I do like to see a few good films, and am an ardent fan of the East Enders soap.